Sunday Feb. 22 2009,
Nice days in winter, you have to take them when they come even if the pastor of your church may call
the next week and ask about your health. I left home about 9:30 am to meet my friend Mike (GL1800
darksider) and new friend Bob (GL1500) at the Exxon station in Russellville Ar.  I went via hwighways
8, 27, 28 and 7 and had a good 100 and some mile ride over some fun roads just getting there.
From there we continued up Hwy. 7 to where  123 turns right at Lurton, followed it, boy is it twisty and
steep, to 374 which goes back to 7 then up to jasper where we took a break and Bob had to gas up,
Mike and I still had plenty of fuel. We went back South on 7 to hwy 16 west and went through the little
towns of Deer, Nail, Fallsville, Boston, Pettigrew, Dutton and St. paul where my roots are. Lots of
memories there, the old general store is gone but everething else still looks about the same as in my
youth, my grandmother’s church is still standing though long abandoned. On to Brachears junction just
a few miles away, I’m in the lead and following a truck pulling a cattle trailer so I decide it’s time for a                                                                                                           smoke break so I pull off on the corner where hwy 23 turns south where an old hotel used to be. The
truck turns on 23 like we planned to do so Mike and Bob cut the corner to get ahead of the truck and
I go ahead and stop for a smoke figuring they will notice, I was in the lead after all. In a few minutes Bob
came back and parked and I showed him where we had lived with my grandparents on top of a mountain
when I was born, my Dad was away working construction incidently just a few miles from where I live
now. A few minutes later Mike came back, what’s wrong, he asks. Nothing, just taking a break I say.
On down 23 (the pig trail it’s called) one of the crookedest roads on the planet and a lot of fun. We then
turned on hwy 215, a road I had been on a lot in my youth as the family would go to the Mulberry river to
camp and fish back when you could just pick a good spot along a river and camp there and see no one
else for as long as you stayed. 215 follows the river on the right and usually bluffs on the left                                                                                                                                  and is an absolute beautiful drive as well as a lot of fun.  215 ends at hwy 103 so we followed it into
Clarksville where we stopped for gas and said our goodbys since I needed to be heading homeward.
We rode together on I 40 until Russellville where I turned south and followed hwy 7 to Hot Springs and
home to Amity. I got home about 6:45 pm with 425 miles on the trip meter for the day and had it not been
dark would have been ready for some more.

David Ogden
DaveO430

Death Zone Ride

One of the best, most soul- stirring rides in America is to the Windy Ridge observation deck at Mt. St. Helens National Monument in Washington State.. If you ever find yourself in the northwestern U.S., do yourself a favor and ride this road.

You get there by riding U.S. Hwy 12 west from Yakima, Wa, through the Cascade Mountain range (in itself, a superb ride), to Randall and then turning off south on Highway 131 which quickly forks into forest rd 23 and 25. Take 25 and then go right on forest rd 26 and right again on forest rd 99 and let it out a little….. Imagine please the most curvy road you have ever ridden, and triple the pleasure it gave you. For nearly forty miles this road turns on itself as it winds and dips through one of the last remaining, beautiful, old growth forests in the world. But that in itself does not make it special……

What makes it special is when suddenly you enter the death zone. Without warning, you leave a land of sweet green and clear water and enter a land of death. One corner, and then you’re there. Like when you die. The landscape instantly turns into something out of Tolkien or Dante…. the forest has been burned, toppled, smashed flat….. gray ash, dust, and dead trees cover everything…… vast acres of forest giants look like they have simply been blasted free of leaves, bark, limbs, and laid out flat in orderly rows like dead soldiers on some horrific Napoleonic battleground……the destruction is unbelievable and frightening. There is a beauty to it, but it is a savage beauty…..the kind of beauty that makes one want to paint his face and beat a drum. It hurts to be there; it’s like watching a beautiful woman rip her lover’s throat out with her teeth.

The road winds on through this dream, this nightmare if you will, until the Windy Ridge Observatory where you gaze into the maw of the monster itself. Still smoking, this “Mountain of Doom” dominates all…. you can’t keep from staring at it….it draws you to it like some great precipice, some great awful sea. The feeling is like how I felt the day — nearly a thousand years ago — when I first understood, totally, that someday I would die, would not exist. This is what this mountain offers you, inarguable proof that what we know is illusionary, is temporary, and totally outside our control. What the mountain tells you is that we mean nothing.

And that you mean nothing is hard to remember when riding a bike. The illusion of super human control, of super human speed, and superhuman power happens the moment you switch the key and fire the bike to life. Instantly, you command more force at your fingertips than untold generations of pre-industrial man. For a few dollars, you are capable of things that even ancient Gods only dreamed about. This is what draws me, over and over again, to the savage maw of Mt. St. Helens – the brutal message that I am not a God, and will never be……

Some can point to the new life that is developing there as a promising message. But to me, that is vastly unimportant. To me the message is: poor little man, quit your posing …. you are not anything special.

There is a great ride, a great ride in every respect, but it is tucked away deep  into the arid and seemingly barren geography of central Washington State , tucked away and hidden in basaltic canyons where it’s seldom found or ignored by many riders who come this way.  People coming through here are usually headed somewhere else, and can’t be bothered or are in too much of a hurry to ride “The Canyon.”   This is their loss, and, unarguably, our gain.  The Canyon is often deserted, and always beautiful……

The ride is anchored by Salmon la Sac campground in the west, and by the small town of Yakima in the east.  It roughly borders the Yakima River, one of the premier trout streams in America; and consists of two old highways, Hwy 821 and Hwy 10, which once were major state thoroughfares.  Completely bypassed now by modern freeways, the roads remain well-paved, well-maintained,  and curvy two laners, and the river is always delightful, from the gentle white water of the “upper” canyon, to the trout-rich green flood of the “lower.”  

I love The Canyon.  I’ve ridden it literally hundreds of times.  When I worked, it was a lunch hour stress reliever…. I could do half of The Canyon in an hour.  When a close friend died, it was The Canyon which felt my tears, and when my mother became ill with Alzheimers, it was the Canyon which echoed my fears…. it is my Canyon, my home, my church…..  It is my main ride.

Gentle now and filled with beautiful life — Bald Eagles,  Peregrine Falcons, Red-tailed Hawks, Pelicans, Elk, Deer, Bighorn Sheep, Giant trout — the canyon was born in a horrific malestrom, the scabland gouging of the Great Missoula Flood, a catastrophe of nearly biblical scale in which pent-up melt from the glacial age burst free from a weakening ice dam and roared across the landscapes of Montana, Idaho, and Washington State.  This horrific flood, the rapids and plunge pools of which left ripple marks 30′ high,  ripped and tore the land into the dramatic sculpture of the rugged  basalt bluffs and deep canyons now existing.   Unbelievable natural violence; unbelievable result; the hand of God writ large and forever enduring….. this is The Canyon.

People were here then, if we can believe the ancient indian paintings in the forgotten caves high on the basalt.  My friend Jack knows of them all, and has shown me a few.  He’s very protective of them; he doesn’t show them to everyone.  The long vanished native artists of the caves very likely saw the horror of the flood, and survived to camp on the river, to hunt deer and sheep on the bluffs, to fish the rapids… they survived, and thrived — at least until the coming of the white man.  It is a haunted place, a lovely place, a place in which I never tire of being.  I will ride here until I die.

Length:  roughly 75 miles one way

Start:  Yakima, Wa

Municipalities:  Yakima, Ellensburg, Cle Elum, Roslyn, Ronald

Ending Point (halfway):  Salmon la Sac campground

Speed limit:  45 mph (Scenic Highway)

Contact:  Mel Goudge (Cousin Jack), pm me on this board….